# Just curious how drowning a bunch of kids can be considered God's will **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 15, 2025, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860 "2025-07-15T01:00:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/321 "2025-08-28T19:47:15Z")
Does it imply that a god _does_ exist? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/322 "2025-08-28T20:09:16Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > First of all, that isn’t true. According to Biblical scripture in which, I’m assuming, all orthodox Jews and Christians believe, God’s “plan” was for human kind to reside in the Garden of Eden in a perfect state of happiness. Clearly, he had a backup plan. It’s plans all the way down. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/323 "2025-08-28T20:12:19Z")
I’ve read that book. I thought it was great. And very, very funny. The author was a student (not practitioner) of the prosperity gospel. Also, this is the only time I have ever envied a dying person. She has the best community and I don’t know if she’s still alive but she’d published another book after that, and I thought shit, the lady dying is more productive than I am. I am an atheist but I got a lot out of reading it anyway. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > Apologies. I really have little interest in “bashing” religion. This thread WAS in the Pit, so I thought it an appropriate forum to express my firm understanding of the irrationality of belief in an intercessory God. I’ve found it really impossible to explain why I’m an atheist without bashing religion. Especially because the problems I have are foundational to those faiths. Which is why I can’t believe! You see the conundrum? ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/324 "2025-08-28T20:28:16Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’ve found it really impossible to explain why I’m an atheist without bashing religion. I’ve appreciated the writings/speeches I’ve encountered in which atheists freely distinguish between atheism and criticism of religion - and then gleefully go on to point out the (to my mind incontrovertible) arguments why religion is more bad than good. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/325 "2025-08-28T21:13:32Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > All knowing would be to know all things knowable. All knowing does not mean magic. The future is not knowable. Oh, I think many theologians would disagree with this interpretation. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > how is God different from magic? (Short answer: it isn’t.) In fantasies where magic exists, it almost always has rules of some kind. God has no rules. And that’s really the reply (not an “answer” in the sense of something that makes sense) to the conundrums of God’s abilities being self-contradictory, to wit: humans can’t understand God, they can only believe. The “mistake” that gives rise to this thread is to think that you can reason out this sort of thing. Human reason is just so woefully inadequate outside of the humdrum workaday world that in higher matters it must be abandoned in favor of faith (n.b. not my view). ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/326 "2025-08-28T21:39:06Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Does it imply that a god _does_ exist? Yes, God does exist ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/327 "2025-08-28T21:41:43Z")
Well, that should certainly settle a shitload of questions around the world! So, what is the evidence that the particular god that you believe in exists? ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/328 "2025-08-28T21:51:14Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > Yes, God does exist Thanks. The scales have fallen from my eyes. My life has been a hollow mockery to this point! ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/329 "2025-08-28T22:20:44Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > As for the other part, it all depends on your concept of “God”. In my view, there is a big difference between sentient creatures that make their own choices and the pre-programmed wind up toys you propose in their place. According to Quantum Theory, every possible choice that is possible actually exists until a choice is made, so the “all knowing” God in the way you picture him can’t exist. I don’t think that’s what quantum theory actually says, but that’s sort of irrelevant, because standard descriptions of God violate _regular_ physics all the time. The theist response is that God, having made the universe, is not bound by the rules he put in place. Which argument applies as equally well to “quantum” objections over God’s existence. And it’s absolutely an article of faith in a number of Christian denominations that God has perfect knowledge of the future. It’s a cornerstone of Calvinist doctrine, for example, that God already knows who is and is not going to go to heaven (the “elect”) and that nothing humans can do will change that judgement, which has been fixed since before Creation. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/330 "2025-08-29T00:07:33Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > But isn’t God all-knowing? So didn’t He/She/It/They know Adam would eat the fruit? I get the distinct impression that the God being written about in that story was neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I suspect that the claims that they were/are came about well after the story was told and possibly after it was written; but by that time the story was too deeply embedded to be dropped. > [@Jasmine](#): > > In my view, there is a big difference between sentient creatures that make their own choices and the pre-programmed wind up toys you propose in their place. According to Quantum Theory, every possible choice that is possible actually exists until a choice is made, so the “all knowing” God in the way you picture him can’t exist. Humans, if deliberately created, were created incapable of doing a whole shitload of things. We can’t choose to stay awake for three weeks, or to have children in litters of a dozen, or to photosynthesize. How would making us incapable of desiring to eat a specific fruit, or more usefully incapable of enjoying another being’s pain, make us “wind up toys”, when those other incapabilities don’t? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/331 "2025-08-29T00:22:06Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I get the distinct impression that the God being written about in that story was neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I suspect that the claims that they were/are came about well after the story was told and possibly after it was written; but by that time the story was too deeply embedded to be dropped. That’s always been my understanding; that the story dates from the era _before_ they went full “God is omni-everything”, and so it was perfectly possible for God to not know something. I will also say that I consider the omnipotent/omniscient/omnieverything God to be outright logically impossible, not merely physically impossible. Sticking all those omnis on something creates multiple logical contradictions, which means it _can’t_ exist even hypothetically. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/332 "2025-08-29T00:26:12Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That’s always been my understanding; that the story dates from the era _before_ they went full “God is omni-everything”, and so it was perfectly possible for God to not know something. God has always been God, so while we may not have known he knew everything in the very olden days, he still did know everything. Hence, he knew about Adam and his issues. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/333 "2025-08-29T00:31:32Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > God has always been God, so while we may not have known he knew everything in the very olden days, he still did know everything. Hence, he knew about Adam and his issues. God is fictional; he has the powers and abilities attributed to him by the people writing him at the time. Which aren’t consistent because more people than one wrote him. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/334 "2025-08-29T00:32:49Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > God is fictional; he has the powers and abilities attributed to him by the people writing him at the time. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/335 "2025-08-29T01:14:11Z")
Omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and (the impossible one for us mere mortals to reconcile with the first three) omnibenevolent. The counter argument from Christian apologists when they’re called out for writing up the rules for God to follow is that it’s the opposite: they’re the most recent recipient of God’s wisdom that he’s decided we’re advanced enough to understand. In all humility. This jibes with the Apostle Paul’s visit to the philosophy schools of Greece (Acts 17), mentioning by name the Epicureans and Stoiks (sic) (the Neoplatonics, Cynics and Skeptics: “what are we? Chopped liver?”) Paul’s argument was that all their art and science could never disprove the existence of God since, duh, God had created it all himself. Mohammed too squared this same circle with the Throne Verse of the Koran: “Who is there that can intercede with Him except by His leave? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, but _they do not comprehend any of His knowledge except what He wills_.” ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/336 "2025-08-29T08:03:23Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > My life has been a hollow mockery to this point! Mine certainly has, but that’s got nothing to do with religion. It’s more of a stretch goal. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/337 "2025-08-29T17:14:28Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and (the impossible one for us mere mortals to reconcile with the first three) omnibenevolent. It’s worth noting that only certain Christians endorse this characterization. I don’t think Presbyterians believe this. Is there any biblical basis for it? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/338 "2025-08-29T17:26:50Z")
It predates Christianity: [Epicurean Paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox) @Spice_Weasel, how did Nietzsche address this one? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/339 "2025-08-29T17:43:08Z")
Oh man, it’s been twenty years since I’ve read Nietzsche, and I don’t recall he addressed this paradox specifically, but I think he hinted at it. > THE HONESTY OF GOD. An omniscient and omnipotent God who does not even take care that His intentions shall be understood by His creatures could He be a God of goodness ? A God, who, for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if they were of no importance in the salvation of mankind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most dreadful consequences for anyone who mistakes his truth ? Would he not be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth ? Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness, and was unable to express Himself more clearly ? Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this? Or eloquence ? All the worse ! For in such a cas6 he may have been deceived himself in regard to what he calls his " truth," and may not be far from being another " poor, deceived devil ! " ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/340 "2025-08-29T19:59:03Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > It’s worth noting that only certain Christians endorse this characterization. I don’t think Presbyterians believe this. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that. I don’t think there are any major Christian denominations who don’t believe that God is both all powerful, and perfectly benevolent. Some googling around for Presbyterian beliefs specifically seem to support this: “[Presbyterians, like most Christians, believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and wholly benevolent (perfectly good).](http://richmondfpc.com/pages/whats-happening/what-we-believe/about-evil.php)” "[In fact, I would suggest that the most quoted description or definition of God is that which is found in our own Presbyterian Book of Confessions, specifically The Westminster Shorter Catechism: “God is a Spirit—infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”](https://thewordmadefresh.org/sermons/what-true-presbyterians-believe-soli-deo-gloria/) " “[Presbyterians believe that everything which happens takes place according to the will of God and can be fully understood only in the will of God. Nothing can come to any man that He does not allow for his own purposes and glory. He overrules the actions of evil men and brings their evil to naught. He works all things after the counsel of His own will and turns all things–even apparent evil–to ultimate good in the lives of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.](https://www.pcahistory.org/documents/believe.html)” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=18)